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Monday, November 5, 2012

Data Protection Laws In India

We have no dedicated data protection laws in India.
Data of individuals and companies require both constitutional as well
as statutory protection. The constitutional
analysis of data protection in India has still not
attracted the attention of either Indian individuals/companies nor of
Indian government.

The statutory aspects of data protection in
India are scattered under various enactments. The Information
Technology Act 2000 (IT Act 2000), which is the cyber
law of India, also incorporate few provisions regarding
data protection in India. However, till now we have no dedicated
statutory and constitutional data
privacy laws in India and data
protection law in India.

Further, we do not have a
dedicated privacy
law in India as well. Privacy rights in India are still
not recognised although the Supreme Court of India has interpreted
Article 21 of Indian constitution as the source of privacy rights in
India. Just like data protection, provisions pertaining to privacy
laws in India are also scattered in various statutory enactments.
Privacy
rights and laws in India need to be strengthened keeping
in mind the privacy
rights in India in the information age.

Another
related aspect pertains to data security in India. In the absence of
proper data protection, privacy rights and cyber
security in India, data security in India is also not
adequate. Further, we do not have a dedicated cyber
security law in India as well.

Perry4Law and PTLB
believe that Indian government must formulate different laws for
privacy, data protection and data security. The IT Act 2000 has
already committed the mistake of incorporating all cyberspace related
aspects at a single place. This has resulted in a chaos and we have
no effective law for any aspect of cyberspace.

Perry4Law and
PTLB suggest that India government must formulate separate laws for
issues like privacy, data security and data protection.